The construction continues...

Hello again. Well our original intention was to try and put up pictures as we did the work, but obviously that hasn't happened. Having said that, it's time to play catch up. Since our last installment we've made a great deal of progress. The room actually looks like a room now. Ok, enough babbling let's show you what we've done.
First off, after installing the two casement windows we installed a new double hung. The work was similar to the other two windows with a few minor differences so we've only included one picture here of the window once we had it installed. You'll see it again in the later pictures.

Next we began doing the electrical work. We had to wait until after the windows were installed to do the electrical installation because of the extensive amount of reframing that the windows required. Since the electrical cables run through the framing, the framing obviously has to be in place before the cables can be put in place. The wiring installation is not something that really lends itself to photographic display so we didn't take to many pictures of the electrical rough-in work, but here are a few. The first was taken in the first few days of the installation and you can see cables hanging everywhere. The second two pictures were taken after the installation was completed and are just a representative sample of what the work looked like.

Once the electrical installation was done the county building department sent out an inspector to check the framing, rough mechanical and rough electrical work. After passing all three inspections we placed faced R-13 insulation in all the exterior wall cavities and then had the county send out another inspector to do the insulation inspection. Then with all our inspections taken care of and approved we had the drywall contractor hang and tape the drywall. We originally planned to hang it ourselves and just have him do the taping, but we eventually decided against that course of action. Here are a few pictures of the room after the drywall was finished.

Drywall makes a heck of a difference in how you perceive a room. In the 4-5 hours it took for the installers to hang the drywall it was transformed from a rough construction looking room into a true room. Anyway, once all of the drywall work was done we rolled on a coat of primer and then had the flooring company come in and install the new flooring. The original kitchen had pine floors over which several decades worth of linoleum had been applied. The remainder of the house has solid oak floors. We decided to tear out the kitchen floor and have it replaced with solid oak flooring as well since we are turning the what use to be the kitchen and dining rooms into one large room. The picture below shows the primed walls (slightly off white color) and the new flooring.

The lighter colored boards towards the top and right of the picture are the new boards the darker boards are the original ones from the dining room. We intentionally had the flooring installers remove some of the old dining room boards so that the new boards could be staggered in. If new boards had simply been placed where the kitchen used to be then there would be an obvious delination of where the wall used to stand. While we are on our honeymoom the flooring company will come back and sand down the entire first floor to remove all of the original stain and then restain all of the flooring the same. Once this is done the new and old floors will blend together almost seamlessly. Once the floors were installed we painted the walls, the results are shown below.

Like the color? Unfortunately the pictures don't really do it justice. I think that's because of the poor lighting in the room right now. Hopefully it will show up better once the lights are working. Anyway, it's called Plum Perfect and we like the way it turned out. We think it is going to complement the cabinetry and the appliances well. It's not your most typical kitchen color, but some of the people we most admire have plum rooms and they inspired us to try plum. We will be installing the cabinets this weekend and maybe this time we'll actually put up pictures in a timely manner.